megaduck

The world is full of infinite joys and sorrows, and we can only focus on one at a time. That's the blessing and curse of being human.

So, tonight some of us grieve for a tree. You may grieve for other things if you choose, but that doesn't diminish our loss.

There's probably a financial component too, but that's not being emphasized. OK Go seems to think that the most critical thing for their continued survival is the tight relationship between them and their fanbase. Anything that jeopardizes that needs to go away. There's some good lessons there for us web startups.

Good luck to them. Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead seem to be doing quite well on their own, and hopefully a smaller player like OK Go can make it work as well.

Maybe next year, if we can fit in an 'entertainment and networking' budget.

However, there's a basic human tendency to look the other way when abuse happens. That's really what I was referring to. Apple has been swinging the ban-hammer on 'undesirable' apps for a while now, and the definition of 'undesirable' keeps expanding. That's an issue of some concern.

Really, I understand where he's coming from but there's more types of entrepreneurs than the macho asshole. Sure, persistence and wits are a common trait, but there's really only one requirement for being a successful entrepreneur: You have to be able to get people to give you money.

There's a thousand ways to do it, and it's not some kind of special exclusive club that requires a particular personality type. Frankly, I'm a little tired of the "This is what makes an entrepreneur" posts. It's self-indulgent and distracts from the real goal, which is generating cashflow.

  First they came for the PhoneGap applications, and I did not speak out- 
    for my app was iPhone-only;
  Then they came for the boobs, and I did not speak out- 
    for I was not a porn peddler;
  Then they came for the shovelware, and I did not speak out-
    for I was not an app spammer...

However, a few years ago I realized that there was a ton of stuff about me online. Photos on facebook, an article in a school newspaper, all sorts of directories and listings. I had an online identity, whether I wanted one or not. Moreover, I knew it would expand exponentially with time.

So, I decided the only solution was to put my own stuff up. I started blogging, Facebooking, and posting on places like HN. I now control the conversation by making sure that most of the stuff about me is from me. That way, I'm in the driver's seat.

We are all public personalities now. Yes, it's somewhat distasteful and a PITA. Life in the fishbowl can be stressful. However, the only alternative is to completely withdraw from the world, and that's not really an option.

Stock is impossible to value without knowing the percentage of ownership. Since this usually comes up when you're negotiating compensation, it's appropriate to ask at that time.

Some stuff is starting to emerge, but we're still largely dependent on tests to catch stupid mistakes. When I'm chasing down a bug, it would be nice to have a variety of tools to throw at the problem.

Secondly, Google specifically denies Damballa having any first-hand knowledge of the attacks or the resulting investigation. Strike two.

Third, Damballa's conclusions are completely unfounded. The fact that the attacks were 'unsophisticated' in nature doesn't exonerate the Chinese government. In fact, it seems quite in character. Strike three.

Until Damballa or Google publishes something more conclusive, I think we can safely ignore this story. As it stands, this smells like a grab for media attention by a new security vendor.

Not all of the complaints are cellphone specific. Some of the patents in the filings are from the NeXT days, long before HTC was around.

For example, Engadget ran an analysis on Palm vs. Apple a while ago. They found that both companies infringed heavily on each other's patents, for things from list scrolling to three-way calling. Starting that particular food-fight would probably end badly for both companies.

HTC is a much softer target. HTC is relatively new in the business, with a smaller patent portfolio. They're also a foreign corporation, which may give Apple some home advantage in the courtroom.

At its core, this is all about Google. Every single Google developer phone has been HTC, as well as the G1 and Nexus One. If Apple prevails, that would be a pretty big blow to Google just as Android is beginning to spread its wings.

If you're hosting inside China, then you've got to get a license from the government to run a website. To get said license, you must comply with all of the regulatory restrictions, which basically means total governmental access. As the article says, you are liable for anything that your users do, so it's in your best interest to self-police. For extra fun, the laws aren't all published and can change at any time.

You've also got all the issues of running a corporation in China, which requires a very different skillset than the U.S. or Europe. Corrupt government officials combined with savage (and well-connected) competitors is the norm. Plus, rule of law is weak. Get ready for some real hardball.

Hosting in Hong Kong or Korea is easier, but then you're susceptible to the Great Firewall. If you're on the government shitlist for any reason, your website just goes poof for all your customers. You'll probably also have difficulty getting money from inside China to outside China.

There's definitely people that make it work, and my hat's off to them. However, for most people the U.S. and Europe has a heck of a lot less friction.

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2009/09/27/Concur-dot...

Mr. Bray is also notable for having one of the most amazing and intelligent 'comments' sections I've ever seen on a blog. Good reading.

The most fun I've ever had in programming was programming Flash. There, I said it.

Flash is an absolute blast. In my first experience with it, I was able to slap together a simple sprite-based game with basic physics, sound, and a video background. The whole project took about 10 hours, and most of that was learning the toolkit and ActionScript. ActionScript is still one of my favorite languages.

Yes, it's terrible for standards, has awful usability, etc. We should be pushing web standards hard. However, we shouldn't forget that Flash makes programming fun and accessible. That's pretty neat, and so I hope it never dies entirely.

However, I'd like to add that Nintendo's desire to control their licensing was one of the prime reasons that Nintendo never produced a CD-ROM based product. That left a gaping market void that Sony filled spectacularly.

This is a little bit of speculation, but I think if the N64 had a CD-ROM instead of carts, they would have kept Square and Capcom, and PSX would have been another Saturn.

To their credit, they ramped up pretty fast. Last September, they hired Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer (the Bespin guys) to run developer relations. Ben and Dion immediately restructured the developer program, and Palm had their big developer program rollout in December/January, six months after launch.

As of today, the 'App Catalog' is tiny but growing at a pretty good clip. They're at over 1500 apps right now, and are growing at around 20% a month. If they can survive another year, they should be up to Blackberry levels.

Palm's target market was 'the fat middle', which meant people who want a little calendaring, a little media, a little web browsing. The problem is that people don't want a middle-of-the-road device. People want things that are awesome.

Palm met their target. The Pre does everything, and does it pretty well. Multitasking, 3D gaming, calendaring, to-do lists, social networking, email, photos, and (as of tomorrow) video. It has more features than an iPhone, and is elegantly designed in a way that Android never will be.

However, there's nothing it does obviously better than the competition. Blackberries have better email. iPhones are better media players and game machines. Android has Google Nav, Google Voice, and phones with ginormous screens. Other than the (incredible) multitasking, there's no clear advantage to buying a Palm that'll fit in a 30-second sales pitch.

They need to pick a market segment, and go after it hard. Business people, young people, somebody. There's a saying in politics: "The only thing in the middle of the road is roadkill."

Edit: Seriously, guys, I'm trying to be as civil as possible here. What's with the downvotes?

First, a (very) slight correction. Piracy was a factor, but the N64 also didn't support CD-ROM because Nintendo was addicted to the control and revenue that the cartridge system gave them. The N64 cartridges had lockout chips preventing unlicensed software, similar to the NES carts. They even strengthened the system with a checksum calculated at boot.

I think Apple might be approaching a similar tipping point with things like Flash and Google Voice. These are obviously features that consumers want, but Apple is too addicted to their control over the platform.

Look at the game sales charts on The Magic Box. NDS and Wii games dominate the top 20, and have been doing so for years. There's simply no comparison.

It's really hard to make the argument that Nintendo's screwing up here. If anything, facts seem to support the argument that loose licensing requirements leads to dominance.

Developers hated doing business with Nintendo. Nintendo put every game through a rigorous review process, and stripped out anything that they found objectionable. This castrated a lot of games like Mortal Kombat and Final Fight, and ensured that some titles never came to market at all.

Nintendo also charged a licensing fee, and ensured that only licensed games could be played. In order to distribute games, publishers had to buy the cartridges from Nintendo at pretty hefty prices.

This system worked great until Sony came along, and told publishers that they'd cut a better deal. Much more relaxed terms, and a far fewer restrictions on content. Suddenly, developers migrated en masse to the Playstation. Square became Sony-only. Capcom suddenly concentrated on Playstation games like Metal Gear Solid. All of a sudden, all the big new games were Playstation exclusives, and the only big games for N64 were Nintendo's own first-party titles. At the time, it felt like a switch had been flipped.

I feel a similar dynamic starting to play out with the App Store and Android. History seldom repeats itself, but it tends to rhyme.

Bill Brown (the Citibank manager) made pretty strong statements like "I assure you that Citi is committed to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender communities". There's not a lot of wiggle room there.

As a piece of corporate communications, it's nicely done. He openly addressed all of the customer's concerns, without immediately throwing one of his employees under the bus or being defensive. That's a delicate dance.

I'd like to say that Citi's callout of LGBT support was smart. The gay community and their supporters is a massive group, and quite sensitive to this kind of bullshit. We're also in activist mode right now, so being perceived as anti-gay can be rather costly for a big business.

There's also things that are already shipping, like Ubuntu's Netbook Remix and the Litl netbook.

These products are all daggers aimed at killing traditional desktops in one way or another. They've got a good shot, too: I've been using UNR as my primary OS for over a year now, and it's met all my needs both as a user and as a developer. I still keep around a MacBook for photo work, but it's been almost entirely replaced by a netbook + phone.

We'll see who the winners eventually are. However, it seems pretty obvious that Windows and OS X in their current form are doomed.

What America really needs isn't more scientists, although that would be nice. What's required is more scientific training for entrepreneurs and business people, so that they can help shepherd projects out of the lab and into products. If having a research lab becomes viewed as a competitive advantage by investors, then getting funding becomes simple.

There are a few major success stories, where companies consistently use advanced research to churn out profitable products - Google and 3M spring immediately to mind. We should be trying to replicate those models.

If you're into computers at all, this is a must read. Alan Turing not only gave us modern computer science, he also kicked off the field of Artificial Intelligence with this groundbreaking paper. He opens it with the question "Can machines think?", and then proceeds to examine it from every conceivable angle. Not only does he predict strong AI, but Turing also provides methods of development and a robust framework for testing it.

This paper's massively important, but it's also a pretty good read. It's about 20 pages long, written in reasonably accessible style, and requires no serious mathematical background. Turing was an amazingly clear thinker, and that really comes through. There's also a lot of sly humor embedded in there. If you're looking for brain candy, this one's a gem.

There's a copy at http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/TuringArticle.html

He then pronounced, "From this moment onwards, none of you will ever see me smoke a single cigarette." True to his word, he quit entirely and permanently. He was incredibly proud, and the fear of being caught was a massive and effective deterrent to cheating.

It seems like Mr. Carr is trying to take the same tack. I wish him the best of luck with it, alcoholism can be quite pernicious and difficult to kick.